09 October 2014 4:19 PM

A Debate at Canterbury

Just a few words about a debate about the death penalty last night, in which I argued against David Radlett of the University of Kent. The debate, at Keynes College on the Kent campus, was good-humoured, level-headed, reasonable and thoughtful. I’d guess there were about 100 people there. As is almost always the case when I take part in debates, I won the argument but lost the vote. The great pleasure was the number of students who came up to me afterwards to say that the event had caused them to think.

This is what makes these events (which keep me up way past my bedtime, involve a night away from home, and use up a surprising amount of physical and mental energy) worth doing. Canterbury is always worth visiting, of course, especially since they opened the new bullet-train service from St Pancras, which makes it much easier to get to. The unaccompanied singing of the psalms and canticles at evensong in the cathedral was particularly moving and thought-inducing, though I still can’t see why the mother church of Anglicanism cannot use the Authorized Version of the Bible for its lessons. You can see the floodlit cathedral from the University’s hilltop campus. I had walked from one to the other, and the contrast between the two places, and their architecture, meaning and purpose, was very striking.

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RT are reporting that there is an argument in the British government whether Christianity should be taught in Muslim schools during religious education. I believe it would be a great tragedy and betrayal if Muslim children are not taught about the once faith of this country. Perhaps the host could have some influence over this?

***I'm not sure how instructive your comparison is, given that we generally don't treat humans in the same way as we treat dogs. Also - and this is a point that bears repeating until proponents of the death penalty acknowledge it - it is equally true that convicted murderers would be unable to kill again if they were kept in prison for life, or at least until they were so enfeebled as to be incapable of harming anyone.***
Posted by: Joshua Wooderson | 11 October 2014 at 05:49 PM

The powers that be are apparently more diligent in ensuring another innocent isn't killed by a dangerous dog than they are when the known killer is one of our own species.

Incarcerating convicted murderers for life would be effective in protecting the wider public but would leave prison staff and other inmates still at risk.

Which is also the case in the existing situation in which convicted murderers are freed - after as few as seven years - and then kill again.

@ Mr. Bunker - "Having said that .... looking back it was a bit risky letting two little kids play with a big dog without adult supervision."

I dare say.

Interesting that you think the real risk was to allow unsupervised children to play with a dog but a few sentences before, you nonchalantly spoke of stomping round the countryside as a child in possession of a 12 bore shotgun!

It's also interesting that a vegetarian such as yourself used to go around blasting small furry animals with a firearm.

"Paul P – as I have pointed out to you more times than I care to count, the 'system' will not permit death sentences for murder either."

Yes I have conceded that - about a billion times.

"You are rather disingenuously comparing an idealised system (or rather, your idealised system) with the system as it actually is."

I compared no such thing. I simply asked you why you continue to field a penal code that will never exist as if it is a viable alternative, first to the death penalty and secondly to the present broken system.

"In my idealised system......"

We can talk about idealised systems forever to no purpose other than the manufacturing of a light breeze. The present system doesn't work. What, then, should replace it that would work and would be voted into law by parliament? It is an impasse. The present system will simply be tinkered with at social services level and continue to non-serve the public interest.

"Life prisoners have more incentive than most to be compliant, because the removal of privileges matters more when you face spending your entire existence behind bars. So promising them early release is mostly unnecessary."

I dare say. So why is this system not already in place?

"Of course, political and financial imperatives may mean that prisons find it more convenient to release them early anyway, but there is nothing inherent to life imprisonment that makes it so."

Undoubtedly, but the public interest is here associated with justice and safety rather than the convenience of the authorities. The reason murderers-in-ordinary are released early is because do-gooderism in this area has achieved the status of ideology, and as is the case with all ideology the results, for good or ill, are inconsequential to the pursuit of the ideology.

Well, you are backtracking now. First, you say that the "system" will never permit whole life tariffs, than that they do exist for "ordinary" murderers, whatever they may be.

The fact is that the "system" does allow for whole-life tariffs and it would be a simple procedural matter to apply them to all murderers. The Home Secretary has the power to impose whole life sentences in any case of murder (indeed, I do not believe that this power is limited to the crime of murder).

There may be howls of protest from certain quarters were she to do so, but the problem is surmountable and there is no impediment in the "system" to her taking such a course.

Paul P – as I have pointed out to you more times than I care to count, the 'system' will not permit death sentences for murder either. You are rather disingenuously comparing an idealised system (or rather, your idealised system) with the system as it actually is. In my idealised system, the punishment for what is known in the USA as first-degree murder (wilful and premeditated with malice aforethought) would be life imprisonment without parole.

Life prisoners have more incentive than most to be compliant, because the removal of privileges matters more when you face spending your entire existence behind bars. So promising them early release is mostly unnecessary. Of course, political and financial imperatives may mean that prisons find it more convenient to release them early anyway, but there is nothing inherent to life imprisonment that makes it so.

"This is simply wrong, as there are at least fifty prisoners in the UK currently serving full-life tariffs"

Those prisoners will have either been deemed psychopaths or too dangerous to release and 'unreformable'. An 'ordinary' pre-meditated murder - bumping off a spouse for the insurance, say - will never attract an all-life sentence. All these prisoners need do is gush with remorse and behave. They are out in no time.

@ Mike B
You are correct ,Harry Roberts one example . The Police must be kept on side I wonder how many of those fifty are convicted cop killers.
The other point is that the EU are against a whole life tarrif So at some point we toe that line. As we did with that ancient " At her majesties pleasure" It was found to be un-natural, and therefore against the criminals human rights. Knowing a date of release their human right

Peter Gillan - no point scoring intended I can assure you, merely asking for details. It would have helped if you made your point clearer in the first place. You certainly didn't refer to assisted suicide, so how was I supposed to know?

"indeed I'm not very familiar with the British penal system, but can it really be as bad as all that? Surely not."

Mr Bunker, sir, how many times will you ask this question and have it answered? The British penal system has never been more dysfunctional than it is at the present. Prison is a place where one 'does time' at the taxpayer's expense by way of an hiatus. For most career criminals prison is simply an interregnum. It is a period of down time.

In the case of more serious crimes such as murder the social activists go into 'early release' mode as soon as the murderer passes the prison gates on the way in. The aim is to get him out on the streets again at the soonest. If he murders again then that is a matter for learning lessons, reviewing procedure and adjusting flow charts. It is not a case for abandoning the ideology of socialised 'punishment'.

"it is equally true that convicted murderers would be unable to kill again if they were kept in prison for life, or at least until they were so enfeebled as to be incapable of harming anyone."

Mr Wooderson, why do you keep advocating this non-starter? You know perfectly well that the 'system' will not permit all-life sentences for murder. It will never permit them. Further, the 'early release' is an additional carrot that maintains a compliant prisonership. It affords the minimal supervision and is thus the lowest cost.

"Yes, that is precisely what I think is possible. And he may well think the same "on reflection" - in prison."

What does it matter what the criminal thinks after he (or she obviously) commits his crime? The law has wilfully been broken and the punishments a matter of statute. What has being sorry for doing your parents in for the inheritance got to do with it? Did the debilitating post-crime sorrow cause the criminal to rush over to the police station following his reflection? There is an awful lot of sorrow in prisons - and not enough of it in anticipation.

"Before a murder or other criminal is released into public circulation, every precaution should be taken so that he no longer poses a danger."

And, presumably, after due punishment has been exacted. At one end of the scale we have the motorway speedster who will be speeding on his way to and from the magistrate's court. At the other we have the child-killer wherein our duty to other children requires that we dispose of the vermin permanently and in so doing forswear any mistake on the part of the criminal-friendly social activists.

"But we should try to make this world as humane as possible, and not deliberately and unnecessarily kill people."

Who would disagree with that? But it is necessary to kill predatory child-killers and their ilk. Nothing in my natural conscience is traduced by this. Nothing at all.

I was referring to the push for assited suicide Tony, maybe your not familiar with the issues involved as you seem preoccupied with cheap points scoring I suggest you try some research into the subject.

adeledicnander - I'm not sure how instructive your comparison is, given that we generally don't treat humans in the same way as we treat dogs.

Also - and this is a point that bears repeating until proponents of the death penalty acknowledge it - it is equally true that convicted murderers would be unable to kill again if they were kept in prison for life, or at least until they were so enfeebled as to be incapable of harming anyone.

Peter Gillan, mikebarnes and Paul P - indeed I'm not very familiar with the British penal system, but can it really be as bad as all that? Surely not.

Incidentally I'm still waiting for our motoring and legal expert, Mr Bonington-Jagworth, to explain to me why he says that in the British legal system everything is allowed which isn't forbidden, and on the continent everything is forbidden which isn't allowed (or words to that effect).

adeledicnander - OK, no problem! It may (or probably may not) be of interest that (my sister and) I grew up from toddler-age with a big dog His name was Button and we loved him. He was a mongrel (horrible word for such a nice animal), castrated and grew rather fat. We honestly could do almost anything with him. We even tried to ride on his back. I grew out of childhood with Button. And when I was old enough to shoot, I'd go out with him on a frosty Lincolnshire morning across the ploughed fields with my Dad's 12-bore. As soon as I or my Dad picked up the gun, he (Button, I mean) would go almost into a frenzy with delight, knowing what was to come. If I shot at a hare but missed, he'd still go after it, chasing it hopelessly (he was too fat to run even as fast as a dog can anyway). He lived a long a comfortable life. We loved him and I'll never forget him.

Having said that .... looking back it was a bit risky letting two little kids play with a big dog without adult supervision. I suppose. And after reading about children and even grown-ups being killed or mauled, I wouldn't recommend it now. When it happens, the doggy people always come up with: My pit-bull is soppy and my Staffie is harmless and it's the owner's fault not the dog's and the licence fee should be higher and all dogs should be chipped ... What a lot of nonsense!

It was the dog that did the biting, not the owner, and all dogs should be on a lead in public and the bigger ones should be muzzled. Dogs are not meant for towns anyway (or vice versa). I still think the sight of a dog on the end of a lead is a bit, well, absurd.

It's ironic, indeed it's poetic justice, of a kind, that the bien pensant, ant-capital punishment chattering classes have been instrumental in re-introducing religious public beheadings onto the streets of London for the first time in over 400 years.
I wonder whether McMillan, Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Blair, Brown and Cameron would have thought of themselves as being the heirs and successors to Henry VIII, Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots in re-introducing this quaint public spectacle back to Tyburn, via New Mosul, or Marble Arch, as it used to be known?

News yesterday reported that the dog was a "banned American pit-bull."

Ironically as it may seem, culpability is therefore firstly with those who created - un-naturally selected - the breed.

Despite which, had the animal benefited from an animal behaviour expert, it is unlikely that events would have unfolded as they did. It is even possible that such expertise could have reformed the animal.

The dog was, however, no doubt humanely, 'put down' - if not as a 'punishment' nor as 'an example' - as a 'necessary precaution'.

Therefore not so much an analogy as compare and contrast with every convicted murderer released to murder again.

Mr Page says it would be good to see me at Lancaster University. How kind. I was in fact there last winter (shortly before Christmas as I recall, on a very windy night) for a debate on religion. In the past few years I have spoken at Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, King's London, UEA, York, Exeter Leicester, Nottingham and Bristol. Alas, I have had to turn down Durham (because it is physically impossible to attend their Union's Friday night debates and be back in London in time for work on Saturday) and Trinity, Dublin ( as it is just too far to go)

@ Peter Gillian
We must therefore presume you name is what you say it is . But then again it may not be so. Its a trust you thrust upon us. But either way you points get read.
I wonder why the question was not asked of the Guy, that keeps a child in his fridge. and a few others that are quite inventive.

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